Coomar Narain: Why did a corporate lobbyist betray his country?

The state’s eagerness to hold him guilty in the public’s perception raises questions as to what the spy scandal was all about.

The motivations behind Coomar Narain’s actions were both financial and personal. There is no indication that his actions were motivated by ideology or hatred towards the government or the state. | Photo Credit: Killian Cartignies/Unsplash

In the all-male line-up of the Coomar Narain network, Geeta Narain’s presence was never considered during the investigation into espionage. The investigation failed to focus on understanding the personal, political and international circumstances that could lead to even a common man chasing his private dreams to provide strategically important information detrimental to his country. However, the story of Coomar Narain would be incomplete without the story of Geeta Narain and her bold venture into Delhi from Mangalore as a single woman with a heart full of secrets.

Geeta and Coomar, two humans with aliases, had built a prosperous existence for themselves in the Indian capital. They had important friends in political circles, earned a great deal of money and spent it in style by buying properties in the happening places of the capital and planning for the future. But in the midst of all this, there was a gaping vacuum that was filled with personal failures in building a family and the inability to belong to those who were indeed their family. To better understand why Coomar Narain may have acted without caution in the changing scenario of Delhi, his empty domestic scenario should be taken into consideration. The couple built properties, but they appeared increasingly lonely in these properties.

Two souls uprooted from their homes due to circumstances found themselves in the new capital of the new India. They came together and formed a perfect team—Geeta looked after their home and properties and businesses, while Coomar was a busy corporate lobbyist. However, their choice to take on aliases in their new lives indicated a lack of acceptance, and they were always considered outsiders despite their prosperity.

When the spy scandal broke, Geeta Narain was contacted by the media. She tried to portray her relationship with Coomar Narain as broken. ‘…we did not get along very well. He has his own life and I am happy with the farm and my work here,’ she said to journalists Vinod Sharma and G.K. Singh, who wrote perhaps the only news report of the spy scandal that had valuable observations on Geeta Narain.

However, her argument is contradicted by the reality of their lives. Geeta Narain was the one who handled most of the money and property-related matters in Coomar Narain’s private life, and she was the one who called the shots. In 1973, she wrote a letter to the authorities stating that she was selling her Nizamuddin residence to the ‘Bharat Sewa Trust’ of Allahabad, a trust run by the influential Sherwani family of Uttar Pradesh.

Coomar Narain was successful in navigating the Indian capital, but his wife was just as capable at home, making it a true partnership. Were the Narains the Rosenbergs of India? Were they ideologically motivated? Did Coomar Narain’s superiors in the government service treat him disrespectfully, which might have made him amoral and even antithetical to the Indian state?

The motivations behind Coomar Narain’s actions were both financial and personal. There is no indication that his actions were motivated by ideology or hatred towards the government or the state. Instead, he appears to have been a deeply alienated person who relied on his strong-willed wife, who complemented him well. He was polygamous in professional relationships, and according to media reports, he may have also been polygamous in his personal life. However, it seemed he trusted only Geeta with his safety and secrets. As someone who left behind only his actions and not voluminous diaries, his motives can be understood through the personal and professional decisions he made. There is no evidence of ideology playing a role in his choices.

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The story of Coomar Narain was narrated forcefully by the powers that wanted only one version to survive, which held Coomar Narain guilty in the public’s perception. The state’s eagerness to accuse Coomar raises questions about what the Coomar Narain spy scandal was all about. Were Coomar and his network of stenographers and secretaries working together for decades? Or were there more important and better-connected people who were perhaps not investigated?

As far as accessing Indian defence secrets was concerned, it is widely known that Coomar Narain was not the first or the last person to access them. The issue that caused outrage was not the access to these secrets but the fact that they were accessed by those outside of the circle of power, such as stenographers and clerks, who are typically considered inferior to their superiors. Additionally, the fact that these individuals were able to benefit financially from this access caused the systematic quake. This can be explained by the fact that there was no substantial examination of the foreign angle beyond the expression of displeasure through diplomatic channels to France, Poland, East Germany, Soviet Union. However, Coomar Narain himself had confessed that he had been active in the field of information for close to twenty-five years and that he had evidently been rather amoral in acquiring and sharing information among his clients in Delhi’s diplomatic circle.

A Singular Spy is a gripping story of the Coomar Narain spy scandal that shook the country.

The spy scandal involving Coomar Narain has lasted for a long time, partly because Coomar himself never talked about his exploits to the media. However, Roger Faligot, Jean Guisnel and Remi Kauffer have now reported that there was indeed an intelligence operation to access Indian defence secrets. The objective of this operation was to make French defence items more attractive in a market where Moscow had a long-established monopoly. So, it is safe to say that Coomar Narain was a participant in Operation Nicobar, run by the French. There are likely to be similar plots related to other countries that, unfortunately, may never come to light because no investigation was conducted on them.

Nevertheless, the Coomar Narain spy scandal stands out because it shows that the elite are not always in control of the narrative. There are times when those who exist without agency of their own can play a role in shaping the course of the state. A proper investigation would have unearthed far more uncomfortable truths, as has been indicated in the previous pages. However, in the absence of that, it is Coomar Narain who has to bear the cross alone.

Kallol Bhattacherjee is a journalist who primarily reports on foreign affairs and is currently Senior Assistant Editor at The Hindu. Excerpted with permission of Bloomsbury India from A Singular Spy: The Untold Story of Coomar Narain by Kallol Bhattacherjee.